One Giant Heap of Mankind

I’m Art Kumbalek and man ohmanischewitz
what a world, ain’a? So listen, just so you’s know, I’m a big-time fan
of professional prize-fighting, the sweet science, otherwise known as
boxing for you’s dunderheads. And so it came to me as complete shock,
surprise, chagrin that my favorite boxer of all time, the retired
Canadian 37-year-old Arturo “Thunder” Gatti, became decisively and
permanently knocked-out by way of being strangled by his 23-year-old
wife via the strap on her handbag. What the fock.

That’s not a boxer’s
way to go. A wrestler? Yes. Hulk Hogan choked to death by a
foreign object— makes sense. But a boxing world champion, coauthor of
the legendary triagic trilogy he fought with Irish Micky Ward to go
down for the count by way of a lady’s purse? No sir. This world of
ours, something wicked comes, just so you know. Anyways, no essay from
me this week ’cause I got to go meet with mine own campaign brain trust
over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the corner of
Hysteric Center Street & Humboldt—where today is always at least a
day before tomorrow, and yesterday may gosh darn well be today—and
kick-start the 2010 Art Kumbalek Democracy Express for Governor of the
Great Overtaxed State of Badgerlanders Who Rightfully Hate the Guts of
Anybody Trespassing Our Borders From the Shit States of Illinois and
Minnesota, I kid you not.

Come along if you’d like, but you buy the first round. Let’s get going.

Ernie: Any
you’s guys see that list of the Best 100 Places to Live, in America I’m
guessing, where New focking Berlin clocked in at no. 34?

Little Jimmy Iodine: You
betcha, this list for America’s best small towns. Must have some pretty
fancy strip malls out that-aways, ain’a? Never been to New Berlin, but
I hear some people call it the “new West Allis,” but without all the
white trash.

Herbie: Sounds nice. Diversity’s overrated
anyways, what the fock. Had a brother-in-law pass through there once on
his way to Dodgeville Correctional. Told me that if a slice of your
futureheaven was never-ever again having to sit next to a fat guy with
bladder issues on the bus, New Berlin would be a final resting place
for you. They don’t have buses. And on top of that, things are so
spread out, you got to get into a car and drive just to go take a leak,
I kid you not.

Julius: Fock ’em. It’s no Cudahy, and never will be. I can’t imagine being a kid and not being able to focking walk to
the diamond of my Little League game and then afterward visit the
liquor store on the way home for an ice-cold bottle of Squirt and a
pack of baseball cards, with no adult supervision involved besides the
asshole behind the counter.

Herbie: Yeah, that’s a nice
youthful remembrance, Juley. What, all of a sudden you’re Ray focking
Bradbury and next you’re going to tell us your ma and pa are carnival
magicians from Mars? What the fock. So listen you guys, I was trying to
reminisce about Michael Jackson the other day, and for the focking life
of me I couldn’t remember that joke about his glove with baseball.

Ernie: Oh
yeah, yeah. I remember it as back in the years and years when the
Brewers really sucked-ass, something like “What do the Milwaukee
Brewers and Michael Jackson have in common?”

Emil: Neither one knows how to get a hit anymore?

Herbie: You
talk like a sausage, Emil. “Glove,” Emil. “Glove” is at the center of
the axle that drives that joke, for christ sakes. The answer was, “They
both wear a glove for no apparent reason.”

Emil: Yeah, real focking funny.

Ray: But who can forget why Michael Jackson popped into the Kmart?

Little Jimmy Iodine: I can.

Ray: ’Cause he heard boys’ trousers were half-off.

Herbie : “Trousers”?
You got to be jerking my beefaroni. I haven’t seen or heard the word
“trousers” since Ma dragged me to Robert Hall’s for
back-to-focking-school-durable-lame-clothes shopping way back when
Frankie focking Avalon was the then-king of the pop charts. I get the
heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. Bartender?

Art: What,
he’s some kind of zombie now, like he was in that MTV video from back
when they showed music mini-movies before they turned to broadcasting
show after bitch-show featuring young, white suburban women supremely
full of prideful ignorance?

Herbie: You talk like a sausage, Artie.

Emil: Michael
Jackson only pretended to be dead, so’s to set up his biggest comeback
ever. Screw those so-called fifty-London concerts they talked about.
What he’s going to do is tie-in the 40-year anniversary of the American
man-on-themoon come this July 20 along with his resurrection from the
so-called dead. You’ve heard about this space shuttle that keeps
getting delayed from takeoff? Come Monday, TV programs will be
interrupted by a special report that the space shuttle has actually
landed on the moon, and out-come from the hatch is Michael Jackson and
that monkey he used to have, what’s-his-name.

Julius: Bubbles, ain’a?

Emil: So
Mr. Jackson performs his famous moon-walk dance on the moon
anniversary, how ’bout that? Meanwhile, Bubbles his chimp reprises the
opening sequence to that 2001: A Space Odyssey movie, the one
where the monkeys shit their pants on account of the appearance of some
kind of monolith they can neither eat nor fock. Show business. Nothing
like it, don’t you think?

(Hey, it’s getting late and I know you got to
go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek
and I told you so.)